As the library approaches its 50th anniversary celebration I can’t help but reflect on the overwhelming support the library has received from the community throughout its history. One woman’s mission to provide books for her children and the rest of the people in the community without having to drive to Tyler lit a fire within the community that is still burning bright 50 years later. People who don’t regularly use the library are often surprised when they come in and discover what all the library has to offer. We have at least one person a week who comes in to the library who has not been here since they were a child and they are always amazed at the changes they find.

Over the last five years our main goal has been to push towards offering greater technology resources for the community. Through grant funding and support from the Friends of the Library over the last five years we have added a website, an on-line catalog where patrons can place books on hold, request titles and even renew the materials on-line or set up an account so they can do it by text message. We have also added an program for patrons to checkout eBooks, download audio books, and stream video, and we started checking out mobile hotspots to our patrons just last month. All these things were done while continuing to provide reading materials for the members of our community. A year and a half ago we decided that charging daily fines for the vast majority of our the items we check out was not serving our community in a manner in which we were comfortable with so got rid of the old fine structure and adopted on that is more patron friendly.